I think this comes down to the usual doublespeak with these things.

"Exercise personal responsibility" = follow the rules.

"Apply some common sense" = break the rules.

I wonder what Winston Churchill's take on Covid would have been ?

According to the Netflix series "The Crown" he had to deal with a similar crisis due to smog, but that only lasted a few days.

Quote from: Paul J on December 21, 2020, 11:39:37 AM
I think this comes down to the usual doublespeak with these things.

"Exercise personal responsibility" = follow the rules.

"Apply some common sense" = break the rules.

Ok I think I follow this;

So common sense led us into tier 4?

Quote from: honestjudge on December 21, 2020, 11:08:35 AM
Ahh....Personal responsibility.....I remember that 

#
what was the other thing there used to be 

oh yes, self discipline !

precious little of either around these days.

There are similar restrictions here in Ireland. But what annoys me is that for most of the restrictions, the public are 'advised' to abide by them. The mentality of the general public is that it is only 'advice', so there will always be some who disregard that advice. And the Government set a bad example as the medical advisors will recommend a course of action, but the Government delay that course of action for a few days.  . I know I have said this before and it is draconian and unfair on some sections of the public, but the restrictions should not be advisory, they should be mandatory. (I realise that there must be some exceptions). Stop the population moving about and you basically stop the virus. Louisa, as some of you know, works in a supermarket and the number of people who go in the shop without masks is beyond belief.  The management seem to do very little about it, so Louisa and some of her fellow workers have started refusing to serve customers who are not wearing a mask. It does not make a right lot of difference, but it makes Louisa feel a bit better.

Basically the collective 'we' have brought the current situation on ourselves although I have noticed that as the amount of testing increases so does the positive cases so I reckon if all tests are cancelled there wouldn't be any more positive tests so problem solved
As it is we are only a couple of miles from the tier 2/tier 4 border so we are currently building the barricades to stop the unclean nipping over into our 'safe zone'

Quote from: thebrighton on December 21, 2020, 12:56:18 PM
Basically the collective 'we' have brought the current situation on ourselves although I have noticed that as the amount of testing increases so does the positive cases so I reckon if all tests are cancelled there wouldn't be any more positive tests so problem solved
As it is we are only a couple of miles from the tier 2/tier 4 border so we are currently building the barricades to stop the unclean nipping over into our 'safe zone'

How can you have tier 4 border tier 2, surely common sense would upgrade tier 2 to 3 around tier 4.

Quote from: Richard G Dallimore on December 21, 2020, 01:09:36 PM
surely common sense

where does 'common sense' fit into owt?  It seems to me that 'common sense' was removed from the vocabulary last March.

I thought we'd agreed the SS. COMMON SENSE sailed ages ago and is now in the mid Atlantic going too fast in an iceberg field with no binoculars for the lookouts 

Edit - beat me to it dannyboy

Don't all tier 4 areas border tier 2? Because they were originally upgraded to tier 3, and then universally changed to tier 4. That doesn't have a direct impact on the neighbouring areas, and I don't want 'upgrading' purely because a neighbouring area has a higher rate of infection. Particularly when it's generally being done at a country/unitary authority level, which are pretty large areas.

It's always going to be a problem with defined borders (but how else can you do it?). We are supposed to be going to get my daughter registered on Wednesday, in a tier 4 area, whilst we're tier 2. We phoned to cancel, but actually they're deeming it essential travel and have said they're a COVID secure site, and the likelihood is that it won't be changing any time soon, so crack on.

Unsurprisingly there have also been stories of the dirty tier 4 buggers rushing to our lovely healthy tier 2 towns once theirs shut down, so it'll be interesting to see what impact that has. That said, let's not pretend there's a material difference either side of an imaginary line on a map, particularly in more rural areas.

Quote from: dannyboy on December 21, 2020, 01:13:57 PM

Quote from: Richard G Dallimore on December 21, 2020, 01:09:36 PM
surely common sense

where does 'common sense' fit into owt?  It seems to me that 'common sense' was removed from the vocabulary last March.

Common sense has been very uncommon for years... 

Here's the Squidlet's kindergarten class here in Tokyo performing their Christmas play last week:



Apologies for the blurry pic, selected deliberately for privacy, but you can see each and every one of them is wearing a facemask. It beats me why grown adults have such problems doing something a bunch of 4 and 5 year olds can do on a regular basis...

Quote from: railsquid on December 21, 2020, 03:15:04 PM
It beats me why grown adults have such problems doing something a bunch of 4 and 5 year olds can do on a regular basis...

Far too many adults have no more sense than they were born with, whereas 4 and 5 year old kids have 4 or 5 years development on those adults

Quote from: Newportnobby on December 21, 2020, 04:06:38 PM

Quote from: railsquid on December 21, 2020, 03:15:04 PM
It beats me why grown adults have such problems doing something a bunch of 4 and 5 year olds can do on a regular basis...

Far too many adults have no more sense than they were born with, whereas 4 and 5 year old kids have 4 or 5 years development on those adults

Yep you are so right! 

Quote from: thebrighton on December 21, 2020, 12:56:18 PM
As it is we are only a couple of miles from the tier 2/tier 4 border so we are currently building the barricades to stop the unclean nipping over into our 'safe zone'

You mean like this for a cycle track:

or this for the greener areas:


These went up in mid-March when the green border between Germany and Switzerland was temporarily closed for casual visits (like my favourite walk down the above cycle track). The border opened again on June 15th and has remained open, despite the second wave. Both sides depend too much on each other for workers/shopping and the seven day incidence is roughly the same on both sides of the border.

People are very disciplined when it comes to mask-wearing (required in the centre of town, in shops and on public transport) and all supermarkets/DIY stores provide disinfectant for your hands and trolley. At the moment only shops with essential goods are open (in the first lockdown the DIY stores were open), but there is no blocking off of aisles with e.g. electrical goods, if the store happens to sell them. We do have an 8pm to 5am curfew on this side of the border, but this will be lifted for three days at Christmas. As someone has pointed out, a calculated risk, but the Deutsch Bahn has put on extra trains on the most frequented routes to stop people sitting too close to each other.

Peter

PS: It took me two hours to load the pictures, the link did not copy into the post!